The Debate, Sept. 2017: A multi-part discussion on disruptive innovation, marketing and branding

Christine Mau

Senior brand strategy director, Medline Industries
Independent consultant, MauHaus
Mentor and educator, School of Visual Arts New York City
Co-emcee for 2018 BXP Live!
Former senior director of global brand design at Kimberly-Clark

How do you define disruptive innovation?

The Harvard Business Review outlines a tight definition of disruptive innovation, where the authors argue that even Uber does not meet the criteria. I think the term has taken on broadly accepted connotations to include almost any new solution that is recognized by both industry experts and the general public as game changing. For me, disruptive innovation is the thing that is introduced and everybody looks at it and says, “Wow, it’s so intuitive to use or it’s such an elevated experience, I can’t believe nobody thought of that before.” Examples include the circular control wheel on the first iPods, Method’s packaging or the Heinz tottles that dispensed from the bottom, the Dyson bladeless fan, Scott coreless toilet paper and Uber. These solutions violate perceived rules or boundaries we have about product categories to bring a fresh perspective to an old or unrecognized problem.

Why should larger companies care about disruptive innovation?

Big corporations have big billion dollar brands and therefore, a lot to lose if they get it wrong. And smaller start-ups have everything to gain if they get it right. Disruptive innovation means breaking the rules and standing apart from the crowd. This can be an uncomfortable place for the big corps, so it’s hard to get those disruptive concepts passed through the layers of approval in behemoth organizations. The start-ups have more agility, more passion, a closer to the top person making the decisions and they have less to lose. This is why we are seeing more and more disruptive innovation from the little guys rather than the ones who have the giant research and development budgets.

What products, services or products are ripe for disruptive innovation?

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Anything at any time. But look at some of today’s pain points like mortgages or health insurance. In many ways, people in my age group were the ones who righted the housing market. When my generation was looking to move from their small starter homes, the market values were very high. But when we finally sold our homes, we all took $100,000 hits or more. It wasn’t the actual industry that absorbed those losses. Because that behavior wasn’t punished, I believe we’re heading for that same housing bubble to happen again.

For example, when I took out my mortgage I had to show that I had a stable income and put 20% down. But people at the height of the housing bubble, they got the mortgage without all that. So they could basically be living in these big beautiful houses, rent and mortgage free, for years. When they got kicked out, they didn’t really care because they weren’t losing their $100,000 down payment. The pipeline then was full of people who didn’t need to meet their obligations because they hadn’t made significant investments.

When the housing industry adjusted for that, housing values dropped for everyone. This meant all of us who made the investments have now paid more for their homes than they are worth today. It’s so wrong.

But I also feel like there are enough people today who care about this issue and have strong value convictions that someone will come up with a solution and that we’ll all benefit from it.

Beyond the health insurance and mortgage industries, there’s education. There are hundreds of pilots out there for education but we predominately still line kids up by age, regardless of ability, and teach them siloed topics in 50-minute increments. Education is ripe for innovation based on a model of creating learning experiences that integrate subjects into real-life situations.

How can design and marketing leaders start an honest and fruitful conversation about disruptive design and marketing?

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Start with human behavior to identify “conceptually” what the vision will deliver.

Celebrate the “lessons learned” along the way because they will point you toward the solution. When you’re learning those hard lessons, keep your focus on the vision and stick with it. Too often businesses walk away from great innovations because consumers reacted negatively to the execution.

How can design thinking be used to create disruptive innovation?

Design thinking helps prevent us from believing we “know the problem” to be solved. It forces us to investigate and immerse ourselves into the situation, to watch humans in action, which increases our empathy for any situation. It’s through this discovery that we find unchartered areas to explore. And by rapid prototyping and piloting ideas, we are able to more quickly identify what works conceptually before refining it.

In other words, a good innovator will get something 80% right in launch. Innovators don’t need everything to be perfect at launch, but what they need desperately is more consumer feedback and the way to get that is to put it in the market and then respond and adapt.

But the second to market has the benefit of also watching that pilot be executed in real life and then take quick response. Often, some of our biggest, best and favorite products services weren’t the first to market.

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Like the idea everyone cites—the iPhone. Apple wasn’t the first to bring a smartphone to market, but Apple did it in a different way. So it’s kind of like being disruptive on top of the original disruption, like a double disruption.

Have you or your teams delivered disruptive innovation in your marketspace?

At Kimberly-Clark, I was lucky enough to work on several disruptive products.

For some background, K-C’s Scott brand is big on the East Coast but we really didn’t know how to endear it to the Midwest market. On the East Coast, their spaces are smaller so they don’t have the space for an eight pack to be stored in their cupboard. In the Midwest, where homes are often larger, Scott became known as a value brand.

By making the brand more eco-friendly by taking out the paperboard core, we showed alignment with shoppers’ beliefs and gave them an opportunity to make a purchasing decision that supports those beliefs. We made it easier for people to not only talk about their values, but follow through with meaningful action in their day-to-day lives.

And it wasn’t a difficult thing to implement because you never really needed that paperboard core. So that wasted paperboard core was just one of those things that people took for granted. When we took away the core, the reaction was, “Wow, why didn’t I think of that? That’s such a simple answer to changing people’s lives for the better.”

On the Kleenex side of the business, we were able to create an innovation that elevated our disposable tissue offering to household décor. The Kleenex brand had an idea for a holiday carton, and the package itself was going to cost 10 times more to produce than a typical carton. At the market price back then, the additional costs would mean that we would sell every carton at a loss. We had to pass some of that onto the consumer.

Internally, there was a big debate about if consumers were willing to pay more for what was thought of, remember this was back in 1995, as just tissue. You might recall the box. It used a Fresnel lens, which created this optical illusion of a bunch of different baubles trapped just under the surface. It looked very three-dimensional, but when shoppers picked up the box, they realized each surface was actually flat.

We then gave ourselves permission to fail by making it a limited run and a trial at a retailer who embraced innovation. Target agreed to a one-season run in some but not all of their stores. Consumer response was amazing. We had planned to be on shelves in the holiday season from October 31 to December 25, and we sold out two weeks prior to even getting to Christmas.

We had actually underestimated people’s pull for this, which initially was a bit of a problem because you never want consumers to be met with empty shelves instead of product. But it gave design permission to experiment and develop products that the shopper really wanted.

We took that permission and created things like the oval Kleenex container, which made it OK to put a box of Kleenex in a room like your living room or your foyer. The oval shape had meaning to the consumer because it was seen as something more high-end and decorative that looked like an accessory versus the box of Kleenex that kept you company when you were sick with a cold. The oval container was functional too because shoppers who had a regular need for tissues, such as allergy suffers, now could keep Kleenex throughout their homes versus just in an upstairs bathroom.

We were able to re-apply the idea of packaging as part of the product to not only the Kleenex brand, but the Cottonelle brand, Huggies Pull-Ups and U by Kotex. The launch of U by Kotex really tapped into shoppers’ desire for something beautiful in their lives. Up until that point, everything in the feminine care aisle was either in hygienic white or pastels.

At the same time, the Kotex brand was suffering a decline that had been going on for quite some time. The brand was down to a couple of facings at Target. When we did a trajectory, we saw the brand could be extinct by 2011. That gave us permission internally to “go big or go home.”

And we did that with the entire brand not just the package design. The U by Kotex commercials made fun of all of our old advertising and said, “We know this isn’t how you want to be talked to. You want more direct and honest conversations about your period because it isn’t something to be embarrassed about. Women menstruate and this is a product that will help you feel your beautiful self, every day of the month.” This is a very different message than, “Oh you have a problem. I’m sorry you’re having your period. Here are some hygienic-looking sterile medical looking things to help you through this tough time.” Our advertising made fun of the woman riding the horse on the beach in the white pants and her hair blowing through the air, or the blue gel being poured in to demonstrate absorbency.

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Then we looked at who our target market should be, and we wanted to make something for younger women looking for a different solution than what previous generations had. So we used a black carton in the fem-care aisle, because up until that point, everything had been pastels and hygienic white as the idea of discretion was very important. The black carton told younger women that we wanted to talk with and design for her in a new way, and we wanted to create an experience that would be different from everything else in the store. Instead of designing something to this “feminine look,” we went for something that was bold and contemporary and looked and acted more like accessories in her life.

Not all of my favorite disruptive innovations come from brands that I’ve worked on. I admire the work Mondele–z does with the Oreo brand. It’s one of my favorite disruptive brands! They’re continuously filling the pipeline with innovative fresh ideas that attract shoppers’ attention. They are so clever, and they keep challenging my perception, as a consumer, of what that little filled cookie could be! As an industry person, I appreciate that they do more than just put a little yellow violator in the corner of the package to get my attention or share insights into their brand. They could have just put a little yellow flash in the corner of their package when they wanted to support Pride Day, but they created a social media campaign that was much more impactful. [Editor’s note: A social media ad showcased a digitally rendered Oreo sandwich cookie with several rainbow layers, to demonstrate the brand’s support of diversity and encourage social acceptance.]

A violator on a package often just talks to a brand’s current base, who are already coming to the shelf looking for you. I don’t think it’s as effective at getting new shoppers interested in your brand. But when you do something that’s completely unexpected and you reinvent yourself, you will grab shoppers’ attention, especially mine, to look at what the brand is doing.

Is there any reason why companies should avoid disruptive innovation?

I believe it’s important to fill the pipeline with renovations as well as innovations. With the number of entrepreneurs out there today, your category or industry will experience disruptive innovation. The only question to be answered is, Will you be leading it or following it? It takes a clear vision, tenacity and grit to launch a disruptive innovation because anything that new will meet with some criticism. You have to ask yourself if your brand is inherently a leader and does your team have the bravery to be first.

That said, just because you weren’t the first to market with the big idea, doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility to be innovative. Lyft proved it’s possible to achieve success even if the market was created by someone else.

Disruptive innovation means breaking the rules and standing apart from the crowd. This can be an uncomfortable place for the big corps, so it’s hard to get those disruptive concepts passed through the layers of approval in behemoth organizations.